Tip Top is not only our biggest ice-cream brand – it’s an iconic part of our collective childhood memories, but this positive disposition doesn’t necessarily convert into behaviour. A strategy needed to be found to get customers to experience the joy of Tip Top again. To remember what it was like to eat an ice cream as a child.

The biggest challenge was to move away from traditional TV advertising to an experience-based campaign and get people to remember the sheer joy that Tip Top used to bring to their lives and ultimately get them eating more today. But it had also been decided to market the Tip Top Masterbrand rather than all of the individual brands separately. Something a little new in the market…..and something which required a respectful, yet strategic, repositioning of this iconic brand.

Making New Zealand “Feel Tip Top” was born from this repositioning, and needed to bring it to life in a meaningful, relevant, and modern way that would engage New Zealanders across the country. The creative proposition was quite simple: instead of just talking about how ice cream could make you feel good, let’s demonstrate it.

A 30” launch TV commercial encouraged Kiwis to go to Facebook and nominate someone they would like to make feel good, wherever they were in New Zealand. These nominations were used to determine where the truck would go and who would receive a hand-delivered ice cream. Then we did it, we took the truck around the country and hand delivered ice cream. The live and unscripted deliveries were filmed and shared with the rest of New Zealand.

With a target of just 2,000 entries, over 31,000 nominations came in via Facebook. Not only that, but the team at Tip Top somehow managed to make 20,000 deliveries to kiwis around the country. The campaign also resulted in over 29,500 new Facebook fans (taking the total to over 100,000). And an additional 1.5 million ice creams sold (1 for every 3 people in NZ).